(Kingston, Ontario, Canada)

Statistics can make for very dry reading.  However, I did promise that I would do a statistical recap at the end of my travel year.  Here are the gory details, along with some previously unpublished photos from Peru’s Sacred Valley!

I had to resist the temptation to visit as many countries as possible during my travel year.  Rather than taking a scorecard or checklist approach, I wanted to focus on memorable and unique experiences.   Despite this lofty goal, I still kept track of the countries I visited…and kept coming back to the “Saskatchewan Question”, as it was the only Canadian province/territory that I had never visited.

In the end, I visited 21 distinct countries in 2014:  Canada, the United States, Italy, Vatican City, Austria, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Croatia, Montenegro, Ireland, the United Kingdom, Peru, France, Luxembourg, Germany, the Netherlands, Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Panama and Costa Rica.  However, I visited both Northern Ireland and England within the U.K…which some people would consider two distinct “nations”.   A similar argument could be made for visiting both the Federation and the Republika Srpska within Bosnia & Herzegovina.  I also made it to the United States, the United Kingdom and France on more than one trip.  Alas, I didn’t make it to Saskatchewan.

I also came very close to visiting some other countries.  I was within a few kilometres of the Nicaraguan border when I was on a river safari in Costa Rica.  I was very close to Belgium during my adventures in France and Luxembourg.  I also tried to go on a day tour to Albania from Montenegro but the tour didn’t run because of insufficient demand.

Countries I had seriously considered visiting (to the point of checking airfares and flight schedules) included Chile, Argentina, Ecuador, Fiji, French Polynesia, the Cook Islands, New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, Namibia, Slovenia, Latvia, Lithuania, Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania, Kosovo, Serbia, Macedonia, Russia, Ukraine, St. Lucia, St. Kitts and Nevis, Bermuda, Bhutan, the United Arab Emirates and Greenland.   Not a bad list!  However, for various reasons, these countries just weren’t in the cards for 2014.  A number of these places are still in my “someday” category but others have been removed.  I now have a much clearer idea of what I still want to do…as well as the kinds of things that are no longer as important to me.

At the beginning of the year, one of this blog’s readers wondered about how many passport stamps I had in my current passport (at that point:  6) and how many I would end up with at the end of the year.  I didn’t think I would get too many, due to the absence of border formalities within in the European Union.   Nonetheless, I now count 30 stamps in my current Canadian passport, including one from the non-country of Machu Picchu.  A number of airline agents suggested that I should get my battered passport replaced.

I love travel but I am really not that keen on flying.  Nonetheless, I took a total of 37 flights between March 2 and December 1, 2014.  It would have been 39 but my flights between Chicago and Memphis were cancelled due to an ice storm! On each trip requiring air travel, I passed through Toronto’s Pearson International Airport at some point.  I prefer taking the train to Dorval and flying out of Trudeau International Airport in Montreal but it just didn’t work out this year.   I only used the Kingston airport on two of my trips,  as I don’t like the very small planes that fly out of here.

The total number of kilometres travelled, the total number of frequent flyer points, the number of restaurant meals…with a bit of digging, I could probably come up with many more statistics-oriented blog entries. However, I think I’ll save those for the book…

In the meantime, stay tuned for the previously-unpublished “lost post” from April of 2014 and a collection of posts from non-2014 trips.  I’ve got some very interesting off-the-beaten path travel experiences that I look forward to sharing.